


Paperclips

by harpers_mirror (SapphireBryony)



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, less platonic makeouts and (implied) sex, platonic cuddles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2016-01-31
Packaged: 2018-05-17 08:01:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5860726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SapphireBryony/pseuds/harpers_mirror
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The exhaustion of maintaining a space station by yourself makes people do funny things.</p><p>Plus Windows 95, non-emergency contact, unusual sincerity, and a pretty good impression of the strangling tendrils of the Blessed Eternal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paperclips

I was awake and something was tickling my nose. Well, half-awake. Half being a generous estimate. The last couple of days had basically amounted to one big, endless lucid dream as it was, so I really wasn’t thinking much except, _“Ugh, what now?”_ and feeling a slight need to sneeze.

Actually opening both my eyes at the same time and getting them to focus felt like a Herculean feat by the time I’d accomplished it and, truth be told, it left me feeling pretty proud of myself. 

The tickley stuff was still attacking my face though. I brushed clumsily at whatever it was, only to find my hand tangled in - hair? Long red hair, and kind of a lot of it. 

Slowly - _slowly_ \- my brain started to whir into gear with all the speed and processng power of a dying Dell laptop running Windows 95, and I realized a few things: 

1\. The hair was Minkowski’s. 

2\. It was attached to her head. 

3\. Which was resting on my shoulder. 

4\. Because she was snuggled up against me, asleep. 

Huh. Well. None of that really explained more than it didn’t. 

Looking around us slowly showed that we were on the bridge, and some fuzzy bits of memory started to form a bigger fuzzy picture: with alarms going off every 30 or 40 minutes last night, we’d given up going back to our personal quarters to sleep and just strapped in here. No sense wasting 10 minutes in transit for 20 minutes of sleep, after all. Evidently one or both of our straps hadn’t been fastened very tight causing us to drift and eventually, run into each other mid-air. 

And then we ended up with our arms wrapped around each other. You know. Like you do. 

Which was not really a problem as far as I was concerned, though I suspected Minkowski might have a few things to say on the matter when she woke up. Still, she’d had as little sleep as I had over the past week and I didn’t have the heart to wake her when an ungodly loud alarm would probably do that for me in the unpleasantly near future. 

It definitely didn’t have anything to do with enjoying her presence. Nope. No way. Of course I wasn’t enjoying the first non-emergency, non-medical contact I’d had with another human being in a year and a half. 

I did want to do something about the hair situation though. It was out of my face for the moment but seemed to have decided that suffocating its owner was a solid plan of action, and that seemed like something I should probably fix. Rummaging around in my jumpsuit pocket, I found what I’d hoped to find - paper clips! Those were basically the same as hairpins, right? 

Somehow, I managed to get one into the near side of her hair one-handed, a necessity since my other arm was still wrapped securely around Minkowski. 

What? I didn’t want her to float away. For, um, safety reasons. Let's go with that. 

And well, it didn’t look great, but it was out of her face. The side facing away from me was trickier. I got the paper clip secured but I think I must have jabbed Minkowski in the head while doing it because she flinched and woke up. 

“Wha-?” she asked muzzily. 

“Hey there, commander. Sorry, your hair was doing a pretty good impression of the strangling tendrils of the Blessed Eternal so I was trying to, uh, fix it.” 

Blinking slowly, she raised her head from my shoulder and looked up at me. “Eiffel? What’s going...someone's getting strangled?" 

"No, I - " 

"Is anything exploding?" she interrupted, looking confused. "Going horribly wrong?” 

“No? Should it be?” 

“Oh. Well. Okay.” And then she did something very weird and unexpected. She laid her head back down on my shoulder, closed her eyes, and seemed to go back to sleep. No shouting about me doing weird things to her in her sleep. No recoiling in horror. Heck, the arms wrapped around my midsection barely even loosened. 

“Huh. Okay then yourself,” I whispered at her sleeping form and let my arms, gone tense with uncertainty when she’d woken up, relax and pull her close again. Resting my head on top of hers, my eyes drifted shut again and I was once again out like a light. 

This happy situation lasted for all of ten minutes before the hideously familiar blare of an alarm jolted us both awake. Minkowski flailed as she did and caught me in the face. 

“Ow! Jeez commander, careful of the face. It’s like my one redeeming quality.” 

“Keep telling yourself that, Eiffel,” she replied distractedly as she disentangled us from the velcro straps, before going to work with the brisk efficiency of a woman who’d had way more sleep than I knew for a fact she’d gotten. 

Blearily, I drifted over to her and started going through the familiar motions of our new favorite game, “What’s Exploding and Trying to Kill Us Now?” 

The answer turned out to be “the engines” and we got it sorted after a few more minutes of ear-splitting racket. After the blessed silence fell, I groaned. “You suppose there’s a way to turn down the volume on those things? Or, I don’t know, install some kind of snooze button? Like, I can tell from the way the read-outs are going nuts that the engines are about to go boom, and the big scary alarms of doom aren’t really helping me fix that in any meaningful way.” 

When Minkowski didn’t respond, I glanced over, half-wondering if she’d already fallen asleep again. Instead, I was alarmed to see her floating in front of the controls, face buried in her hands and her shoulders shaking slightly. 

“Hey, you okay?” I asked. “Wait, sorry, stupid question.” I floated over to her and tentatively rested a hand on her shoulder. “Minkowski? What’s..what’s up?” 

To my shock and horror, she sank against me and burst into tears. And for the second time in an hour, I found myself with an armful of my commanding officer and zero clue of what to do. 

Now, I am no stranger to tears. I cry with a frequency societally unbecoming of an allegedly adult male. And I’m not one of those dudes who gets all nervous and stuff when other people cry around me. 

The problem wasn’t that she was _crying_. The problem was that she was _Minkowski_ and we just don’t have this kind of relationship. We don’t cry in front of each other - hell, before tonight I’d have said she didn’t cry, period. But then again, we also don’t cuddle while we sleep and that bridge had already been crossed and burned tonight, so I supposed the usual rules were out the airlock. 

So I hugged her and rubbed her back and tried to think of something comforting to say. 

“Shhh, we’re okay. Everything’s okay right now. And it’s gonna keep being okay, you know why? Because you are the smartest, most capable, most badass person I’ve _ever_ met, and there’s no way this ship would _dare_ explode with you in charge. And if it tried, I wouldn’t let it because you’re the boss here and if I die in space it’s going to be because you tossed me out an airlock for doing something stupid. No exceptions. We’re gonna be fine.” 

As comforting speeches went, I was well aware that it sucked. But the part about my death made her laugh, a watery little chuckle, and I grinned, feeling like I must have done okay after all. Minkowski raised her face to look at me, wiping her eyes and, despite the slight smile turning up the corner of her mouth, the exhaustion and fear written all over her face broke my heart. 

Serious now, I spoke again. “I promise, Renée. We’re going to make it home.” 

It didn’t feel like enough, not by a long shot, but - and maybe it was just my imagination, I don’t know - she seemed to relax slightly. The fact that she was still encircled loosely in my arms didn’t escape my notice. 

And that was when I did something so stupid that I even surprised myself and I’ve had 32 years experience being _me_ , which really sets the bar pretty high in that department. 

I kissed her. 

It somehow seemed like the right thing to do, but even as I did it, I knew that this was probably the end for Doug Eiffel, this was how I died, right here and now. 

Eh, worth it. 

I pulled away after a second, exhausted giddiness warring with fear of what she might do to me. The stunned look on her face _definitely_ didn’t help with the fear, and I started tripping all over my words in an effort to save myself. 

“Oh god Minkowski, I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I did that, that was way inappropriate even after the snuggling and _why_ would I bring that up right now just please don’t kill me, I’m sor - “ 

She cut me off with her lips pressed against mine and, okay, wow she definitely wasn’t going to kill me after all. 

And at that point, my brain pretty much dropped out of the frantic overdrive state it had been operating in and just focused on the incredible woman currently kissing me like our lives depended on it. 

When she finally pulled back, I opened my eyes and gave her a dazed grin. “Hi.” 

Minkowski snorted a laugh and let go of me, looking flushed and frazzled, but less lost than she had before, which made me smile even more. Her hands, no longer tangled in my hair, went to smooth back her own and got caught on the paper clips I’d put in it earlier. 

“What the- ?” She pulled one out, looking baffled, then glanced at me. “Your doing?” 

“Yes?” I said with trepidation. “Your hair got loose and was trying to smother us both, so I...” 

She snorted again. “I wondered. I didn’t think I was quite _that_ tired.” Minkowski worked the other clip out, wincing slightly as it pulled at her hair, then tied her hair back properly. As she did, she spoke again. 

“...thanks," she said, not quite meeting my gaze. 

“Hey commander, I’ll stick office supplies in your hair any time,” I replied, purposely misunderstanding. “Got some pens back in the comms room that I could - “ 

“No, Eiffel, I mean, y’know, thanks for...everything. And...sorry? I guess?” 

“It was my pleasure,” I replied quietly and with complete sincerity. I wasn’t sure if Minkowski would have felt better if I’d made a joke out of it and laughed it off, but I indulged myself. “Any time.” 

Catching the paper clips out of the air, I winked and turned to put them away someplace where they wouldn’t drift into the electrical box and short out the ship or something, when I felt her catch my sleeve. Turning back around, I saw she was blushing faintly again. 

“Eiffel, I...do you mean that?” 

“Uh, yeah. Absolutely. Contrary to what you might think, not _everything_ that I say is total nonsense.” 

I looked at her appraisingly for a second, then caught her hand and pulled her toward me, and this time we both took the initiative at the same time and the kiss met in the middle. Her hands found my hair again and her legs went around my waist, while I steered us toward a nearby patch of wall. 

 

There must be a god, somewhere, because no alarms went off for another 40 minutes.


End file.
